I used to have it easy
by Chrys-DASL
Summary: Rattles ends up with Ratburn for detention, where he must pick an era he'd want to live in. When Ratburn gives him all the details, he gets hooked. Will Rattles become a history buff? For my 10x10 Challenge/NaNo2018


Rattles (8): time travel (6)

 _I used to have it easy_

Mr. Ratburn is always the worst teacher to have for detention because he gives you the lamest assignments. Today he wanted us to pick a time and place to time travel to. Stupidest thing ever. Well we wrote them on index cards, so he drew them out of a hat. He said, "If you guys are going to have to sit quietly, I'm going to explain things to you," and he'd draw out an index card and say how life would be different for you in that time.

The girls have it bad. I mean, Molly picked the whole steampunk thing. Mr. Ratburn knew what that was, so that was cool. I didn't think he'd know about anything other than pop quizzes and puppets, but he did. He told her that would be a cool time period, but most of the books we read from this genre aren't accurate unless you throw all that gender stuff out the window. What kind of junk is that?

But she wasn't the only girl. Some other chick picked Little House On The Prairie and Mr. Ratburn said things really were that dark back then, and we didn't know what he was talking about. He said we'd know when we were older and left it at that, whatever that means. So he drew another card and it was mine.

I picked the revolutionary days. I mean, things were so cool when we were shooting the red coats for taxing us or whatever, so I thought it would be so cool to live back then.

Except it would suck! He said I probably wouldn't have a good way to get around, that depending on my family's status I'd either be a sharecropper or something—I don't know what he was talking about. I understood the whole "only rich people have it good" thing though. I mean, that makes sense. That's the way it works today still. The rich have it made.

But walking everywhere? That sounds like the most awful thing ever. And there weren't any roads back then either. I mean, he said there were cow paths, whatever those are, but there were no real roads. He said a lot of places west of the Appalachians weren't even settled yet. What? I thought people had always been places, but I guess Native Americans don't count or whatever.

He saw I was really into this, and he kept going. He said I'd have to learn a trade if I lived back then, and nine times out of ten or whatever, I'd have to do whatever my father did. I don't know what my father did, and I don't know what my stepfather does a living either. He threw out carpentry for an example. I was like, "I gotta make carpet?" and he laughed (really, Ratburn), and he told me, "No, carpentry is making cabinets or laying floors, mostly things to do with wood. "

That didn't make sense but okay.

He kept on by saying I'd do that trade and probably only ever go between a few settlements in the area, if I ever left my home city at all. That was just crazy to me! But he KEPT on and said that the girls in the class? They would only leave to get married, otherwise they would be stuck at home. If they ever did leave home, they had to be with a male family member, an escort of sorts. He said all those romanticized stories with female heroes were all fiction, that the world didn't work like that. I thought that was crazy, but I didn't question him.

So I asked him about Elwood City and other towns, you know, just to see what was out there, but he said if I really went back to the time I said, a lot of these places wouldn't exist yet. If they did exist, they existed in different forms.

Mind. Blown.

I wanted him to keep going, but it was time for detention to be over. I only had detention that day for once, so I asked him about catching up another time. He said I'd have to stop by his talks at the library on the weekends, every Saturday morning at eight a.m. That sounded really early at first, but I had to know more. Hearing it from him actually made this stuff make sense. Like, I heard it and I could see myself having to walk to another settlement through the woods, but I didn't know how I'd get there.

So that first day, I asked him about navigation—and the other members of the talk let me. Apparently it was a question-answer style, so whoever got the first question had the talk customized for them. We could only talk about navigation, so it started with how they used the stars both on land and on sea (how? The librarian lady snagged a few astronomy books for me to take a look at). They didn't have the compass yet in most places, or at least they couldn't afford them, so most people used the stars and where the sun was.

He also debunked the moss myth. Moss can grow anywhere on a tree's trunk, though sometimes, when conditions are right, the moss goes higher on the northern side because it's darker there. The sun goes east, south, west, down—that order only. That was cool to know. He even showed us where the directions were, but we'd have to guess by knowing the time. Rainy days were hard, but he said most people didn't travel then anyway because it was too wet. You could get trench foot or catch a cold, and anything like that could kill you back then.

It was all interesting, and I didn't think I'd want to go back so early again on a Saturday morning, but the next week I brought my stepdad with me because he heard me talk about it. This time, some old guy asked a question about the prairie and how the whole Dust Bowl thing happened, so we learned about that for a while and how things changed from then to now. Dad even got in some questions, and he said this was a really cool thing we should make a thing of, so I guess I'll do this with him every week now.

I guess it's cool and all, but I never thought I'd like history. I guess Mr. Ratburn is a pretty cool teacher after all, huh?

~End

A/N: Piece 19 of 100. I wrote this for my 10x10 Challenge, which I'm doing for NaNo2018. If you'd like more information, see my profile or shoot my a PM. I'd love for others to participate. Keep in mind you can take however long you need, that yes, I am crazy for doing this in a month.

Also, while I made these themes, I'm struggling with certain ones. This theme is one of them. A time travel remote? I guess I wanted to do pieces set in those time periods, but I don't know how to go about doing that right now, so we'll see what happens with the other characters' responses. Wish me luck making a better piece I guess.


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